While Meta’s losses have been ballooning fast, company chief Mark Zuckerberg appeals for patience during its Metaverse transitions. He also remains confident that all of the company’s bets will pay-off in the long term.
On Thursday, October 27, the stock of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: FB) plunged a staggering 25%, its biggest single-day fall since February. With Meta missing its third-quarter earnings and a weaker fourth-quarter outlook, the FB stock ended trading at $97.94.
Meta Stock Falling after the Company Reports Its Earnings Results
For the third quarter, Meta Platforms reported revenue of $27.7 billion, a 4% decline year over year. This is also the second consecutive quarter of decline for Meta. The company’s profits have tanked more than 50% to $4.4 billion.
Meta has further warned that its fourth quarter would also be weaker than expected. For Q4, Meta is expecting a revenue of $30 billion to $32.5 billion. With Thursday’s stock crash, the FB stock is now trading at more than 71% discount year-to-date. It means that this year alone, Meta has lost more than $675 billion of its market cap so far. This massive crash also puts Meta out of the list of the top 20 largest US companies.
However, company chief Mark Zuckerberg is confident of Meta’s largest bets including short-form video, business messaging, and the Metaverse.
“I think we’re going to resolve each of these things over different periods of time. And I appreciate the patience and I think that those who are patient and invest with us will end up being rewarded,” added he.
Meta’s Reality Labs Unit Making Huge Losses
Meta’s costs have been ballooning in order to fund the founder’s vision for virtual reality and the Metaverse. The company said that its expenses this year could shoot between $85 billion to $87 billion. For the next year 2023, this number is likely to grow further between $96 billion to $101 billion.
Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which undertakes the development of virtual reality and related augmented reality technology, underpinning the Metaverse, has lost $9.4 billion so far in 2022. In a statement, the company said:
“We do anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year. Beyond 2023, we expect to pace Reality Labs investments such that we can achieve our goal of growing overall company operating income in the long run.”
Mark Zuckerberg – All Will Be Fine
Some market analysts believe that the reason behind Meta’s stock crash is that the company is taking too many experimental bets. However, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg is confident that all these bets will pay off. He said that Meta has been working on improving its short-video services, its content recommendation algorithm, online advertising technology as well as business messaging features. Zuckerberg said:
“I just think that there’s a difference between something being experimental and not knowing how good it’s going to end up being. But I think a lot of the things that we’re working on across the family of apps, we’re quite confident that they’re going to work and be good”.
Speaking about the company’s Metaverse developments, Zuckerberg said that it “is a longer-term set of efforts that we’re working on”. He remains confident that it will end up working, too. Zuckerberg believes that Meta has been facing a number of challenges at the same time. This includes the poor economy, the effects of Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update, competition from TikTok, etc.
“I think we’re going to resolve each of these things over different periods of time, and I appreciate the patience and I think that those who are patient and invest with us will end up being rewarded,” he said.
He further added that they are building the Metaverse to make sure that it owns a platform that won’t be adversely impacted by the decisions of its rivals, like Apple.
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